Haitian Revolution Overview

Overview of the Haitian Revolution

• Represents the most thorough case study of revolutionary change in modern world history.
• Internal and international warfare sustained for 10 years resulted in plantation slaves overthrowing colonial status, economic system/ established political state of free individuals.
• Haiti was the second state in the Americas to declare independence, with no administrative models to follow.
• Unlike the British North Americans in 1776, Haiti's revolution was more social and economic than political, which made social revolutions sensitive among leaders of political revolt in the Americas.
• The Haitian Revolution was linked to the wider events of the late 18th-century Atlantic world and the period between 1750 and 1850 representing interrelated revolutions.
• Saint Domingue/Haiti plays a role in the history of that larger sphere
• Revolutions altered how individuals viewed themselves and their place in the world, instilling confidence in political leaders to rationally engineer societies and conditions.

Revolutionary Ferment in the 18th Century

• The 18th century experienced widespread revolutionary situations.
• New ideas, circumstances, and people created a "turbulent time."
• Bryan Edwards, an English planter, lamented the spirit of subversion against ancestral wisdom in 1798.
• For workers on American plantations, the revolutionary situation was an opportunity to change their world.
• The contrast was sharp in Saint Domingue between 1789 and 1804
• African slaves and free coloreds challenged Bryan Edwards' wisdom.
• In fifteen years, the colony of coerced slaves liberated themselves, radically transforming society.

Revolution's Impact and Haitian Identity

• The Haitian Revolution was a thorough revolution that resulted in a metamorphosis in the social, political, intellectual, and economic life of the colony.
• Slaves became equal, free, and independent citizens.
• Haiti became the second independent state in the Americas.
• The Haitian formation model had xenophobic fear from Boston to Buenos Aires and shattered complacency about the superiority of their political models.
• Simon Bolívar suggested freeing slaves in Spanish-American states after 1810, avoiding the Euro-American revolution model.
• Ex-colonists called themselves "Haitians" and defined Haitians as "black", striking a psychological blow to racist Europe and North America.
• Haitian citizens were legally equal regardless of color, race, or condition.
• Haiti refuted the notion that slavery produced "social death" among slaves.
• Haitians transformed plantation agriculture into small-scale self-sufficient producers for internal marketing.
• Dislocations and repercussions occurred for the state and society.

Origins and Enlightenment Ideals

• Origins of the Saint Domingue Revolution lie in changes of the Atlantic world during the 18th century and the French Revolution.
• The movements of empire building in the Atlantic produced the catalyst for political independence in the United States between 1776 and 1783.
• Enlightenment ideas challenged mercantilist notions and legitimized free trading.
• The Enlightenment proposed reorganizing the state, society and nation.
• Leading thinkers promoted new ideas of individual and collective liberty, political rights, class equality, and some consideration of slavery.
• Peggy Liss shows the concepts of state stayed rooted in the traditional western European social experience that didn't accommodate the tropical American world.
• Moral, religious, economic justifications questioned slavery, leading to changes in jurisprudence like Chief Justice William Mansfield's 1772 ruling.
• Associations promoting amelioration and abolition formed.
• Religious and political leaders attacked slavery like William Wilberforce, Thomas Clarkson, Granville Sharp, Quakers and Evangelicals.
• Antislavery movements flourished in the metropolis and colonies.
• Abbé Grégoire, Abbé Raynal, Marquis de Lafayette, others formed Société des Amis des Noirs in France, addressing the Estates General in 1789.

Economic and Social Context

• Caribbean plantation slave societies thrived during the 18th century.
• British and French sugar producers drew attention in imperial capitals.
• Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations (1776) argued that free labor was cheaper than slave labor.
• The plantation system created strange communities, with labor from Africa and management from Europe.
• Production included sugar, coffee, cotton, and tobacco.
• French Saint Domingue was the richest colony, accounting for ~40% of France's foreign trade.
• Plantations absorbed 10-15% of US exports in the 1790s.
• It produced two-fifths of the world's sugar and over half the world's coffee.

Social Divisions in Saint Domingue

• Population structured like a slave plantation exploitation society.
• Approximately 25,000 white colonists dominated the social pyramid.
• A subordinate stratum had about same number of free, mixed-race people (gens de couleur).
• A depressed majority of ~500,000 African workers.
• Plantations of sugar, coffee, cotton, and indigo served as cohesive forces.
• Economic viability depended on importing African slaves and commercial marketing operations
• There were three distinct castes: whites, free colored, and slaves.
• Class divisions existed across all sectors of society.
• Class antagonism among whites existed between grands blancs (successful) and petits blancs (small merchants).
• Whites feared and mistrusted gens de couleur, especially wealthy, educated ones.
• Free non-whites found political and social abilities were limited
• Skin color and genealogy caused internal divisions
• Status divisions within the slave sector derived from skills, gender, occupation, location, relationship to production, or the master's whim

Tensions and Resistance

• Slave society was explosive, with carefully negotiated tensions.
• Owning slaves produced mutual interest across caste lines, but not enough for class solidarity.
• White and free colored slaveowners were insensitive to slave humanity, but forced to negotiate to prevent collapse.
• Race and color didn't facilitate affinity between free non-whites and slaves.
• System breakdown resulted combination of circumstances not revolutionary disposition of commercial construct.
• Caribbean slave system contained seeds of its own destruction.
• Slave revolts occurred in the Greater Caribbean between 1789-1832, associated with Creole slaves, before abolition or Santo Domingo uprising
• Slaves claimed European government abolished slavery, but local slaveowners prevented it.
• Abolition in Saint Domingue and in Cuba / Puerto Rico, later on, came from economically weak and politically isolated metropolises.

Revolution and Colonial Context

• Local bases of society and political power differed in France and colonies.
• French estates had a long tradition, but Saint Domingue's political system was new, determined by race.
• Lack of separate language for colonial reality and limitations in common language caused confusion.
• French society revolved around class distinctions, while slogans didn't apply to metropolis and colony equally.
• Confusion came from cahiers de doléances representing plantation owners views and due to complex geographies.
• Each free segment accepted the revolution slogans to be accepted in France, but then emphasized those who applied to them individually.

Armed Revolt and Power Shifts

• The French Revolution in 1789 led to conflict over form and representation, differently affecting metropolis and colonies.
• Colonial representatives did not share the ancient history and tradition of the Estates General.
• Saint Domingue consolidation gravitated toward non-whites, slaves, ex-slaves, descendants.
• Colonial situations were difficult to resolve easily for metropolitan legislators.
• Armed revolt in the colonies started with grands blancs resenting the petits blancs controlled Colonial Assembly of St. Marc in 1790.
• Both white groups armed slaves for war in the "revolution" name
• The National Assembly Decree enfranchising propertied mulattos meant they forgot class differences and forged an uneasy alliance to prevent racial equality.
• Free non-whites wanted to make a stand for their rights - also arming the slaves for war = inevitable racial war.
• Precedent set was not lost on slaves.

Chaos and Key Figures

• After whites first employed violence, it became common for political violence
• August 1791: After fighting for nearly two years on one or other side of claiming-to-be-liberty free persons, the Plain du Nord slaves now refuse anything less than full freedom.
• Could not be sustained = created independent state in 1804.
• Saint Domingue experienced chaos between 1792 and 1802, as many as six warring factions were in the field simultaneously.
• Alliances were made / dissolved from opportunity
• Power gravitated to the former slaves
• After 1793, Pierre-Dominique Toussaint Louverture turned tide of war assuring the slave liberty concept
• 1793 National Assembly approved.
• Victory of the slaves in 1793 was, ironically the victory both for the revolution and colonialism in France.
• Jacobin commissioner Léger Félicité Sonthonax eradicated counterrevolution and royalism. This facilitated the blacks ultimate victory
• Sonthonax played a role, but doesn't detract from Toussaint Louverture brilliant leadership.
• In 1797 Toussaint Louverture expelled invasding forces, modernizing / making it a democratic constitution.
• The free coloreds revolt failed, which was led by André Rigaud and Alexander Pétion south, captured neighboring Spanish colony Santo Domingo, and freed its small number of slaves.
• A new society in Saint Domingue new political structure
• Toussaint Louverture was for life governor general = Napoleon displeasure
• It can be argued therefore that the abolition of slavery in Saint Domingue came as a result of mutually reinforcing factors
• Sonthonax was a revolutinonary abolitionist; this with a slave rebellion created a link between the revolution and Saint Domingue.

Later Impacts and Reactions

• Saint Domingue wasn't replicated elsewhere in the Americas including the neighbouring French colonies Martinique / Guadeloupe
• Saint Domingue was semi-politically free with a free black population unlike previous dreams - something called "terrified consciousness"
• Napoleon sent brother-in-law General Charles Victor Emmanuel Leclerc with about 10,000 of the finest French troops in 1802
• Napoleon lost / disastrous / futile effort.
• Touissant exiled, Haiti independence declared by Jean-Jacques Dessalines.
• Haitian Revolution was had impact that was both immediate / widespread.
• It spawned unrest, specifically in Jamaica Maroon communities
• Haitian emigrants also affected America - Alfred Hunt
• The revolution deeply affected the psychology of the whites throughout the Atlantic world.
• Haitian Revolution accentuated status across the Caribbean.
• A black independent state as viable complicated domestic relations in the neighboring Caribbean states.
• Maingot: Haiti represented black rule
• White America used "remember Haiti" to restrain local exuberance of local desires specifically with political liberty
• Spain used "terrified consciousness" in a way like Saint Domingue
• Post 1804- Haiti was difficult to continue as complacency
• Haiti cast shadow = antislavery stronger / bolder
• Britain dismantled completely (1834-1838) transatlantic slave trade
• Political equality existed to whites in colonies
• France in 1848 with imperial slave systems
• Spain: Civil War meant anded in US, slavery in Puerto Rico 1873. Cuba: took long destruction period, then 1886.
• Its OWN negative reactions were what was evoked among its neighbours - Haitian Revolution and Haiti itself at a later time.